Image and Ill-Repute

Image and Ill-Repute  I couldn't agree more with your article Jill, it is a refreshing bit of truth. Jesus was, besides his ministry to the lost, an equal opportunity offender. This offense is expected from those outside the church, but worrisome when it happens within it. Well meaning bible thumpers have cast off many whose approach to extending the Gospel did not agree with their own. Not understanding the Lord's full attention to this matter, I look for a positive from this? The only thing I can figure, is that not for this reason in their minds, but one they do without knowing, is to practice the art of judging, so that they will be more comfortable when they are to judge, during Christ's millennial rule here on earth? But in honesty, I don't believe that is true.
  It is the human condition. To always be judgmental of others, as a way, in the Christian community, to reassure themselves that they are indeed more pious then the next guy? I have long believed, at no small amount of scrutinizing looks from well meaners, that when you are considering Christ's three year ministry, that if you leave his humanity out of the equation, that you are not getting all that was meant to be gotten.
  Jesus came to earth as this man/God, so to look only at his divinity, and not at his human failings, that we get only a half of that whole. Because this view of mine has caused so much personal trouble for me, it is easy to understand how not too long ago, again, well meaning saints, tried to drum people like Bob Dylan out of the church. Besides the wrongness of this, I can't help thinking that we, His church, His bride of the nuptials is all that is keeping his return from happening anytime soon? I believe that we must stop this sniping at each other, and look only to a unifying spirit, anything else will just longer delay the proceedings.